DANBURY — Two four-minute spans of determined hockey Thursday night catapulted the Watertown-Pomperaug hockey team into the South-West Conference championship game with a 4-0 semifinal victory over New Milford.

Four minutes after New Milford had a first-period goal disallowed, Watertown-Pomperaug responded with the first of two goals from captain Kevin Murphy. His second goal just 3:15 later, sandwiched around a goal by Derek Bizier, gave the Indians a 3-0 lead and all the momentum they needed for goalie Trevor St. Onge.

St. Onge was sensational at times in finishing with 29 saves, and Bizier added an empty net goal in the waning seconds.

Watertown-Pomperaug will play No. 1 seed Brookfield-Bethel-Danbury in Saturday's championship game at 2 p.m. back at the Danbury Ice Arena. BBD won Thursday's other semifinal, 5-1 over Bethel.

The BBD Ice Cats were the only team to beat Watertown-Pomperaug in conference play this season, 2-0.

Thursday's game marked the third time this season the Indians played New Milford. Watertown-Pomperaug won the first meeting, 2-0, at home and they played to a 3-3 tie at New Milford.

The conference semifinal started with a scare, but the Indians quickly recovered. New Milford's Phoenix Butts had a goal disallowed a little over five minutes into the game when the officials decided the net came unhinged from the goalposts before the puck went across the line.

The Indians (15-5-1) stayed composed over the four or five minutes that followed, despite giving New Milford a power play opportunity. As the power play expired, Murphy jumped onto the ice and took a perfect breakout pass from Phil LeQuellec.

"(Shea Conway) was coming out of the penalty box, and I jumped on the ice behind their defense, got a nice pass for a breakaway, and I just went top right," Murphy said.

That started an onslaught as the Indians outshot the Green Wave, 20-6, during the first period.

Watertown scored on its first power play opportunity, scoring 25 seconds into it. Kyle Block's shot was turned aside by New Milford goalie Matt DePalma, but Bizier ripped the rebound into the net with 5:03 to play in the opening period.

Watertown's early dominance showed best on the third goal. It applied 30 seconds of sustained pressure on the New Milford net. Four shots on goal finally yielded Murphy's second goal off a rebound at the 12:08 mark. Conway and Bobby Narciso assisted.

"There were a couple of shots on net, a couple of rebounds and one just popped on my stick," Murphy said. "I just brought it to the right and put it in the net."

Indians coach Vic Vicenzi said it was great to see Murphy get some quality chances.

"We ask a lot of Kevin," Vicenzi said. "He does penalty kill, power play, big faceoffs. The last couple games he has been stonewalled a couple times. It was great to see him score a couple times because if one kid deserves it, it is certainly Kevin."

The tempo of the game changed in the second period as the Indians were content to a defensive style. New Milford outshot the Indians, 23-9, over the final two periods.

"We didn't want to take any unnecessary chances and give up any odd-man rushes that could give up a goal that really wasn't earned," Vicenzi said. "Everything was about trying to get the puck deep. We knew they weren't going to die after that first 15 minutes. It was going to be a battle. They pushed back hard, and we did everything we could to keep them to the outside and let Trev see the shots as well as he could."

St. Onge had missed the team's previous six games as he was out almost a month with a high ankle sprain. Vicenzi didn't hesitate to throw him right into the semifinal game.

"We rode him for a state championship a couple years ago, so I have all the confidence in the world in him to know he will rise to any occasion," Vicenzi said. "We have been targeting this date for a long time. He's great. He's a very good goalie. He is very calm. Not much is going to surprise him, and he is going to do a good job for us."

St. Onge said it felt great to be back: "I just wanted to play hockey, and having to watch for all those games was really the hardest thing. I finally get to play. I've been here before. The more pressure, the better for me so I love this kind of game. It was just coming back to what I do, playing hockey."

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Tom St-Onge wrote on Mar 1, 2013 12:42 PM:

" Great coverage â€¦Thanks Roger. It was so sweet to have Trevor come out and get a shut out after only having one practice under his belt coming back for almost a month out with his injury. Great job W/P to the whole team !!!!! "

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